This is what happens when Tulane goes wild
The wilderness kind
We carried our homes on our backs for four days and nights like caffeinated turtles—if turtles drank instant coffee every morning and walked miles over steep rocky inclines for fun. We are some of Tulane’s biggest outdoor enthusiasts and your humble trip leaders—an eclectic mix of ecologists, business majors, writers, readers, environmental biologists, public health majors, yogis, vegetarians, definitely-not vegetarians, and knot-tying gurus. Some of us were strangers and some of us friends, but we were all bound by our undeniable affinity to being wild.
As I write this on an eight-hour ride home from Tennessee, I realize that I smell like spoiled onions and the dirt caked under my nails seems to have become an integral part of me. I haven’t touched my phone, looked at myself in the mirror, or taken a “real” shower in five days (does a waterfall bath count?), but I’ve traded these familiarities for extravagance in its purest form- the wild.
We walked miles each day, lined up like ants and sometimes in silence, soaking in the beauty of the green that shot up from the ground and stretched on around us. We stopped as we pleased at each viewpoint, with nowhere to go and no expectations to meet. When we ran out of water, and Hobbs Spring turned out to be Hobbs Puddle, we cut our trail short, found another campsite and a different route home. We were on our own schedule, and we bent it as we pleased.
To have entire days with nothing to do but walk, our minds were freed from all the responsibilities that usually hold us back. There were no requirements to meet or boxes to check. We had infinite time to invest in ourselves without the everyday peripheries that usually swallow our time.
We are too often surrounded by things we don’t need. This fact has never before been so obvious to me, as when I lived out of a backpack and witnessed that even my attempt at minimalism was far surpassed by my more experienced co-leaders. While I brought my toothbrush and a case for it, my friend had broken her toothbrush in half because the less weight, the lighter the load and the lighter the load, the happier the camper.
At Tulane, sometimes the load can feel overbearing: the schoolwork, the social pressure. Between studying and going out, students are slipping through the cracks. We don’t know how to lighten our load.
My feet struggled to carry my weight each day on this trip—not only the weight of the belongings in my backpack but the weight of what ails me. So I unpacked. And the people around me did the same. We helped each other unload emotionally and physically, breaking down the things which we no longer wanted to carry.
As students who are learning and growing continuously, we need time and space to make mistakes. Sometimes Tulane’s campus doesn’t feel big enough for us to mess up. Sometimes, society doesn’t feel like it has room to give.
So we must make room for ourselves. Our houses, our schools, our phones, and our friends are not vessels, and they do not carry us. We must remember our inborn ability to carry ourselves and walk like turtles—carrying our dearest selves on our backs, where we do not live within the boundaries that others have laid before us.
We, the Tulane community, live outside the New Orleans city limits and we live for it.
We are Tulane Outdoor Adventures, and we want to take you outside.